Overview
The pictorial and written portrayal of children as sexual objects has existed through the millennia and across civilizations, with examples dating back to ancient Greece, Rome, China, and India (Bullough 2004; Linz and Imrich 2001). In the modern era, the nature and availability of child pornography has been driven by technological advances, first the invention of the camera in the early nineteenth century and more recently the advent of the Internet and associated digital technologies towards the end of the twentieth century. The Internet, in particular, has transformed the production, dissemination, and consumption of child pornography, increasing exponentially the amount of material available and the number of people accessing that material. Prior to the Internet, images were traded furtively in hard-copy form among relatively small groups of dedicated users. The technical quality of the images was poor, the range limited, and the distribution networks unreliable and...
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Wortley, R. (2014). Child Pornography. In: Bruinsma, G., Weisburd, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5690-2_105
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